The developers explain how the 2950 Imperator election was built, from primary voting to the five finalists. They cover the Imperator's powers, the economy, Synthworld funding, AI research, the Fair Chance Act, the Sol/Terra tension and the Costigan dynasty. Election posters and ads are in 3.11.0.
TL;DRThe panel recaps the lore election process: open entries from any adult citizen, a public vote narrowing to ten candidates, months of campaigning, then a longer secondary vote, with no age limit beyond citizenship.
So for the current election process, just a very broad overview for how we kind of drew it up is about a year out from October 8th, so a year ago, basically the UEE would open up entries for anyone who wanted to basically run for Imperator by submitting videos and filling out this questionnaire for what they would basically set out to accomplish as Imperator. And citizens were allowed to go watch these videos and start to vote and narrow down this extremely wide field to 10. So that's considered essentially the primary voting period. Then we reduce it down to 10 candidates. And those 10 candidates then have a few months to pitch their case to the wider citizens of the universe. And a secondary vote is then taken, I believe it's mid-April in that range. And again, voting periods will last a few weeks, so it allows people from all around the empire to go into facilities or vote where they need to.
Yeah, because in the empire there isn't faster than light communication speeds. Everything has to go through jump points and it takes a little bit longer, so they have a longer voting period to allow for the full collection of all the votes from all the systems to be brought together.
Yeah, and one of the things too with the opening, the idea is that it is literally open to all citizens. You don't have to be a politician. And the idea behind that was this notion that they wanted the best ideas to come forward. If someone has a really good idea and people react to it and respond to it, then you can be nobody and come from anywhere. And if your ideology or your plans or your viewpoint really resonate with people, then it's sort of built to allow you to progress. Now, obviously, more established political parties and political figures have a built-in [advantage]. And money.
When you say open to everybody, you mean citizens? So only people who are actually established citizens of the UEE. Is there any kind of age limit? For the United States, it's 35.
I mean, the open period, and to highlight this kind of craziness and wide swath of candidates you get from the open period, we made the first post about that section of StarWatch where they were actually watching these different kind of crazier candidate videos. So it was a way to kind of fill in the world so you guys would understand that there was this wide swath of people that were coming forward with very weird and strange options. And obviously some of them are just looking for attention. Most of them, like Dave said, aren't going to be able to reach the top 10 because they're not going to get the general support. They won't have the money or the built-in political system machinery behind them generating votes. But it is a very open process. And doing so then allows a candidate like Laylani Addison, who has no previous political experience, to get her ideas out there and start to maybe build, steamroll a campaign that could come out of nowhere in this version of an election and make an impact.
TL;DRThe team says the community-election idea began in early talks, got moving around the last CitizenCon once the imperator's term limit approached, and was then built into a broad-to-narrow process with contrasting candidates.
Well, weirdly enough, it actually started probably in 2013, at least the initial conversations of this idea of having some kind of election thing where we allow the community to take part in it. Because the community interaction is such a big part of this and sort of woven so much into the fabric of this game. But it was that sort of thing of, how do we do this in such a way where we don't accidentally elect a bowling ball because people think it'd be funny, which it would be.
Yeah, totally. But it didn't really kind of get rolling until, actually, it was last CitizenCon when at our panel we sort of unveiled... we'd been sort of talking about it and we're like, hey, we're starting to... I don't know if we'd actually established the exact date where the Imperator was supposed to turn over, that we were sort of coming up to that wall.
Yeah, we had the 10-year term limit established. And then just from the way the lore had been working out, I think it was actually a backer who kindly reminded us on the forums that we were rapidly approaching our term limit. And so we were like, oh, that's a really good point. And that little seed started putting into motion this idea of how we could move forward.
Yeah. And sort of as far as the structure goes, again, we were trying to figure out a way, like Adam was saying, with this sort of super wide swath in the beginning that eventually narrows down, how would this government approach electing this type of official. Because they're coming off of the Messers and stuff like that, they would want a way to make it seem like politics is accessible to the people. And plus, it gives opportunities to have more eccentric type candidates pop up and play around with sort of the Lord Buckethead thing.
And we have previously established that new citizens take their oath and everything and become citizens on Citizen Day. That's on October 10th: CitizenCon in real life, Citizen Day in lore. And so the idea that new citizens would get the right to vote in this once a decade election was really cool to us. And so we decided to anchor the timing of it around that day, of starting the Imperial election at that point. So that was pretty fun.
So with a lot of other things in Star Citizen, we started with this broad structure that they worked through for CitizenCon last year. And then we started to have meetings after that to slowly start to specify and draw in the details about how the voting timeline would work, what candidates would be interesting and highlight certain themes or aspects of the game that we thought would be interesting or play into storylines that were already there. Mira Noh is a senator from Terra that we've mentioned in lore going back years. So we knew the Terra as capital theme is something we want to lean into. And she just seemed like a wonderful way to pull this person who had represented that idea previously in the lore and elevate her to the candidate that's really going to bring that message forward in the election. So it was about getting more specific and then looking back at previous specifics and seeing how we could tie some things together to bring some consistency to the universe.
And if you saw our CitizenCon presentation last year where we talked about the pertinent issues facing the Empire, that helped us provide a framework. So we came up with: what would voters in the universe really care about? What would they be talking about at the time? And laying that on a grid and making sure that we had candidates with opposing views to make an interesting election, and genuine proposals that we could believe in and see as being viable options. We wanted to make it hard to pick.
Yeah. And also the thing, too, is, referring to the Boaty McBoatface thing, because we were opening up this idea of letting the backers elect the Imperator and honoring that, basically we wanted to get down to five candidates who would potentially challenge us, could throw us curveballs as a creative team as far as the political direction of the empire. It was finding candidates who had enough personality to make them pop and feel like they were real people who had ideologies and viewpoints that they could stand on that, again, could potentially throw us curveballs, à la Addison with her stance on AI, which terrifies me at night. But again, it's one of those things, we'll work with that. We have to figure out a way to work with that, which just sounded very interesting and also a fun way for the community to keep us on our toes.
TL;DRThey say the idea is to honor the vote, with candidates chosen so the winner's policies affect the story, and backers are asked to help decide which direction the narrative takes.
To touch more on what Dave said, we wanted Imperator candidates who were strong-ass characters, who had very clear personalities that shone through, and who would have policies that the community could get behind that would affect the story in a very real way.
Yeah, and just to add into that, like I was saying, it was a very collaborative process, from specifying how we wanted the election to go, drawing out the characters, Cherie adding a spin when doing the Galactapedia. So we've been slowly specifying and trying to enrich the world. And I guess with this election, we're essentially asking the backers to help us make a decision as to which direction to take and what lens to help frame the events that are going to occur over the next few years. Is it going to be through a Costigan lens or is it going to be through an Addison lens? So we're hoping that you guys are going to direct us in what way we help drive some things going forward.
TL;DRThe Imperator sets the agenda and conversation for the next ten years and appoints key officials, but cannot enact laws alone because the Senate and systems must vote.
They're in a lot of ways setting the agenda for the UEE for the next 10 years. They can't enact laws on their own, but they drive the conversation and are representative of the people's will that way. If candidates come out saying, I want to shut down Synthworld, that becomes an important issue for the next 10 years. It's not a guarantee that will happen, because of a democratic system. All the senators have to come on board and vote, and all the systems have their say. But that becomes a major issue at that point.
Yeah, and they also have the ability to appoint people, like the appointment of the High Secretary. So the High Secretary will have a profound influence on what infrastructure projects get funded and what don't, that kind of thing. That's on the Imperator to pick someone who'll do a good job.
I was just going to say that they bring in their people. So as far as the legislative aspect of it, yes, the Senate handles it, but the person in charge of the Senate is picked by the Imperator.
I think a good example from the previous term of Imperator Costigan is the Human-Xi'an Trade Initiative, which really opened up how much Xi'an businesses were allowed into UEE space. And that was one of his pet projects, that he really wanted to push our current relationship with the Xi'an forward and open that up more. And so that was him driving that conversation, making the votes happen, and cheerleading that policy.
Sure. Again, we're not going to get too detailed as far as outlining what the GDP of a planet is, because that would fry my brain. But yeah, they come in, they've got a lot of things that they've got to deal with. That's what part of the debate was last week, of how do you handle Synthworld? You have this thing that's completely just draining money. And right now there's no end in sight as far as when they're going to actually accomplish anything. So if you're looking for a quick financial boost to the economy, cut that thing off and redirect that money into other things. They've got a lot. They've got a Vanduul military conflict to deal with. They've got a thinned out military and law enforcement. They've got Synthworld. They've got a bunch of stuff to deal with. So it's going to be fun.
TL;DRThey see no clear path to civil war while the Vanduul war continues; the Terra-capital issue persists regardless of the winner, and armed conflict would need something like a violent separatist movement.
I personally think that as long as the war with the Vanduul is going on, the military resources of the UEE will be very occupied with that. But once the war with the Vanduul ends, if indeed it ends, well, anything could happen.
Yeah, I don't know, it's a tricky question, because right now Mira Noh obviously is the loudest proponent of: part of my goal is that I want to actually enact a transition. Now, she can't just say it and it happens. So obviously, like Will said, there's a democratic process that has to happen in order for her to pull it off. So it's no guarantee, even if, say, she wins. But again, the idea is, if she does win, then that would become more of a priority. So it could have its reflections. But again, if Titus Costigan wins, there would still be the people who are advocating for Terra to be the new capital, but it doesn't have as much political clout. Yeah, the issue won't go away.
Yeah, Mira Noh could again try to push the agenda in the Senate, where she's a representative, but not being the Imperator, the captain of the UEE ship to a certain degree, she doesn't obviously have the power or the authority to really go in that direction. But she could try legislatively.
Yeah. The Imperator is the head of the UEE, is the figurehead of the UEE. It's not that type of thing. Because, again, they want to get away from that Messer era thing where it's, I decree this, and then that's law. And if you disagree, we'll shoot you.
There's a lot of voices. There's definitely movements on Terra and other systems for separatist things: the UEE has gotten too big. We can't control all these diverse systems with just one centralized government. We should all be ruling ourselves as individual systems. And maybe the loudest version of that is on Terra. But Mira Noh doesn't take that stance. She believes in the empire, but just wants to see the capital relocated for a Terra-centric view of the government. And it's interesting to think about whether the UEE would actually go to the point of a civil war if a system applied to separate from the empire, or whether it would be a peaceful transition.
Because there have been... Karen rejected its representation and its recognition after the Messer era. So they did have senators. And they were so disgusted by what happened under the Messers that once they got out, they said, we don't want to be considered a recognized planet, and basically vacated their seats. So I think to get to armed conflict, there's always a path for it, but it's not necessarily a clear one. It would have to be pretty obvious, like a violent separatist movement trying to kickstart something. But yeah, who knows.
TL;DRThey say Mira Noh would stress that she loves and wants to preserve Earth as humanity's ancestral home, while moving the capital to Terra symbolizes humanity's evolution beyond its darker past.
Sorry, I'll just say this quick before Adam goes on, but one of the things that she wants to do is preserve the ancient buildings, ancient art, ancient history on Earth. So she's not trying to say that we'll abandon Earth and throw it in the garbage or anything. Well, from a certain point of view, she wants to turn the ancient institutions and architecture of Earth into something that we preserve and revere, more like a museum or something like that, and less like something that we are burning down by using so many resources.
Yeah, one of the interesting wrinkles in her character I discovered while writing her for this campaign was realizing that we had written her as coming from this long line. Her father, her grandmother were also senators from Terra and have represented the system. So she actually grew up and spent time as a child on Earth. She was raised there for a handful of years. So she's not anti-Earth. She has a deep love and reverence. Out of a lot of the other candidates, she's maybe spent more time on Earth, between the Senate and her childhood, than a lot of other ones. So this isn't a disregard for the planet. It's a want to preserve, as Cherie was saying, the historical heart, but still symbolize to the empire and to our alien allies that humanity is evolving, and Terra's a better representation of who we are currently and where we want to go, from her perspective.
Yeah, I think it's also that thing too of, we have that notion of a dark history. And there's a lot of association, I think, of who we were in our darker times that Earth was sort of the center point of. And with Terra, it's a symbolic gesture as well of, we are who we are today. We are not who we were back then. So to the citizens of Earth, she would probably say, look, this is not saying that Earth didn't do its job or, exactly as everyone's been saying, that it's not a useful planet. It's just that right now we are an evolved society, and this becomes a representation of that evolution, because this is the planet that we have inhabited that we have treated better. We control it in a much more egalitarian type way, because we live in harmony with it, rather than Earth, which was overpopulated and torn apart and then rebuilt and stuff like that. So I think it's also that symbolic aspect of it that's important, the message it sends to the Xi'an culture that we're acknowledging our past, but we're moving beyond it.
TL;DRIn the lore there is no true AI because repeated attempts ended in catastrophe and humanity soured on it, which also suits the design goal of players having to pilot and fight themselves.
So there is no AI. It's a scientific endeavor that people keep trying to pursue, but it always sort of ends poorly. They've tried in the past. There was the Artemis, which is an AI-controlled piloting program that was supposed to take a slow boat colony to the nearest star, that disappeared. There was a traffic thing that they tried to build that just was chaotic and caused a bunch of people to crash and die. So in the lore sense, it was always one of those things where they kept trying to do it, it kept failing, and they just were like, you know what, we're done. But every 10 or 15 or 20 years, somebody's like, I'm the one who's going to solve it. And they do, and then some catastrophe happens. The important thing about the stance on AI is that it's actually the behind the scenes thing, where the idea was that in the earliest, earliest conversations with Chris about the Star Citizen universe, this was pre-GDC announcement, he wanted the universe to feel tactile, and having discussions about what was it he saw in his head? What was it he wanted to build? He liked the idea that pilots had to get into ships and fly places and that it was a future where you had to do stuff. It wasn't, I have an army of AI minions that I can just send out, because obviously an AI will be a better pilot or better gunner or whatever than a human being. But he wanted that Star Wars, in the turret firing at TIE Fighters thing, that feeling, rather than just, oh, the targeting computer is going to auto lock on it and just blast it from 300,000 kilometers away with pinpoint precision. So that became the goal of, that's the universe we're trying to build. How do we justify that? And so that's how we came up with the idea of, all right, well, they've tried it a bunch of times, because to just ignore it doesn't make any sense. So they've just tried it a bunch of times and for whatever reason, something always goes wrong and they've just sort of soured on the idea of it. But again, there's that notion of it's the Holy Grail. So there's always somebody out there who's like, I'm going to be the one to crack the nut.
The hubris of creating new life. I mean, there's advanced computer systems and robotics in the universe. We have our drones that fly around, but the goal is for players to have to direct their actions, to have to be in control of them. You have simulated simple AI like the greeter on New Babbage who can have these simulated conversations, but it's very preordained routines, like a chatbot. So those kind of interactions and friendliness, the system has gotten towards that, but the desire to have androids or ships that can manage everything for you, humanity has just soured on that overall, for the majority. Of course, there are people like Addison who say, we are learning all the time, we can do better. But it's a similar note to what people have said in the past. So it's an interesting dilemma.
TL;DRAddison wants regulated, incremental AI research, lifting restrictions and enabling grants for improving simple systems, rather than pushing for full AI everywhere, though critics fear a Pandora's box.
I think in her initial pitch, she's basically saying some of these simpler systems we have, we're due to open up very restricted research into how we can improve them, because she is of a belief that if we can improve these systems even slightly, they may make things run more efficiently. The massive manufacturing facilities all over ArcCorp might be able to be more efficient, use less electricity. So she's hoping that through additional research, we might be able to advance those, to make some of those, I don't know if you want to call them dummy AI systems, better. And thus lead to new breakthroughs or to new areas that we can go into. The argument against that obviously is that once you start to, it becomes a Pandora's box: maybe you accidentally discover something that then can't be stopped or leads to something bigger. So that's the argument against it. But yeah, she's not out here arguing full AI everything. She's like, hey guys, it's been a few hundred years. We're smart. We can do this in a regulated, smart way by taking these incremental steps potentially. But there's obviously potential drawbacks.
I mean, she wants to give more funding to Synthworld, so that wouldn't work on her. She'd be like, oh, actually, more money to Synthworld and more money to AI. I'm so glad you mentioned that.
Because again, the thing with her Synthworld thing is also the idea that in the journey to create Synthworld, it's going to unlock potential new innovation that could have applications to other things. So it's not that Synthworld is the goal, but Synthworld can give birth to a legion of new innovations.
TL;DRNo, androids wouldn't be imminent under Addison; she would loosen restrictions with safety requirements, which would mainly change mission types and give narrative and design a new lens.
No, because again, like we were saying before, that might be her directive of, hey, we need to loosen restrictions. But it doesn't necessarily mean she takes office and then the next day there's Bishop from Aliens. There's still a process you have to do. And again, she's not even saying that the doors would be flung open on AI. It's just, if people are doing AI, they need to prove that basically they're taking safety precautions to minimize loss. They're not taking risky chances, that type of thing. They have to validate what they're doing. So it's not the Wild West with rampant AI. But it also means that, from a player standpoint, there might be more need for resources on scientific bases and stuff like that, because they're getting more funding to do stuff. Down the line, there's more impact on various companies.
It'll change the tone of the kind of missions. Rather than getting sent to investigate rumors of an illegal lab on a moon that might be doing illegal research, you're getting sent to an official lab that maybe is having issues. That kind of difference. And so there's different ways we can explore what happens when this grant clears. Are we going to see another disaster unfold in real time? Is there a breakthrough that messes up with people or changes the way it is? And these are also hooks that we talk to design about. It often inspires them as well, in what we've talked about before, our cyclical design style of design and narrative feeding into each other. So it'll be interesting. That's true for all of these, when we have talked about how the Advocacy will have changes or how it affects the military systems, and hopefully all that feeds back into how we're thinking about missions and stuff for all the candidates.
Yeah, this is, like I said, why your vote matters, because it gives us the lens through which we'll be making narrative and design decisions going forward. So just based on whoever you say should be steering the ship, it'll definitely trickle on down to a lot of the decisions going forward on our end.
Costigan I love as a storyline, because of the idea of humanity on a whole coming off the Messer regime, where it was unquestionable: anyone in charge is going to have the last name Messer. So we finally got away from that, and we're coming up to this first chance to vote for back-to-back Imperators named Costigan. A lot of people have an intrinsic reaction to not liking it, but there are some people in the verse who want that clear dynastic kind of inheritance and are drawn to it. And a lot of people are saying, we shouldn't even consider that, but just take the candidate on his own merits.
TL;DRCostigan's appeal is his private-sector success and a lifetime around politics through his father, plus a business-forward, freer-capitalism approach they say appeals to people given the strained economy.
Essentially, he has been successful in the private sector, which is something that he is basically trumpeting. He's also been slyly trying to say, hey, I've been watching my dad do this for 10 years. So even though I have no political experience, I understand what it takes to actually be in this position. He's like, I've got a unique viewpoint into it, which is a weird thing. It's a weird needle for him to try to thread. But he is trying to push that. And so I think experience running a multi-system, massive corporation can have some comparisons to government.
And the thing too, bear in mind that Kelos Costigan was the High Secretary before he was Imperator. So for most of Titus's life, he's been around politics. So he's sort of come up around it. He knows the players, he knows the people. He probably gets more of an unfiltered view from his dad about how things work.
And I think if you look at the current economic state that we talked a little bit about earlier with the UEE and how that's wanting to shift, the cost of government is very high right now and they need more income coming in. You look at the past couple of decades, like the sale of the Stanton system, where businesses are taking a larger role in government and that line is starting to blur more, and Costigan represents that next evolution of business-forward government, getting rid of some of the restrictions that control how businesses act and where, and letting a much more pure version of capitalism take form, which a lot of people think would be good for the UEE.
Yeah, particularly when you're dealing with a strained economy, they want to bring in that business innovation to help refuel things and re-excite things and get them back on the other side.
TL;DRThe Fair Chance Act protects planets with developing species from interference, and LaSalle argues it is applied too broadly and should be modernized to allow resource extraction where life is not sentient.
[It's an] initiative that was enacted after the fall of the Messers; it's one of the first ones that was initiated. The dictators had basically terraformed a planet with a developing, evolving species on it that was probably going to achieve sentience. So they terraformed it, which completely destroyed their environment and killed all of them. And in the fallout from that, they were laughing and drinking while they were pointing at the bodies. And footage of that got out, and that's what sparked the revolution that overthrew them. So the new government set up a thing basically saying that if you come across a planet that has a developing species, defined as they are showing aspects of higher thought that might develop, the planet will be sealed off, basically, and protected by the government and military, and no one is allowed to interfere with the species in their development, pro or con. So if they start fighting each other, you let them fight, until they become spacefaring, in which case then we would make contact with them. So they have to get up to that point on their own and then we would reach out to them. But yeah, so LaSalle is basically saying, obviously, you cut off entire planets from strip mining.
Well, and he's saying that it's been applied too broadly. We look at some of the systems that are now Fair Chance systems, and there's systems that are just of scientific interest, that have no life, that have been declared Fair Chance systems. There are systems where the intelligent species, he would argue, some scientists say aren't. And so there's some question there. And the Fair Chance Act has been the sledgehammer of a law to block development. And he wants to take a more refined, careful approach to it.
Yeah. And the Fair Chance Act has been around since the early 2800s, I believe. So like 100, 150 years in the Star Citizen universe. So I believe, a lot like Addison with the AI, he's saying it's time for us to go back and re-examine and update this policy for the modern world, for these maybe new modern technologies that would allow us to maybe go extract resources from places that might have life, [but] may not end up affecting their development. So I think that's part of the angle he's trying to get to, saying, I don't want to get rid of this, but let's just redefine it, let's modernize it.
Yeah, he's trying to present that he is walking a fine line between protecting a planet that only has cellular life that has the Fair Chance Act applied to it, and protecting a planet that has multiple sentient species who may or may not be engaging in warfare. He's trying to present that he doesn't want to strip mine planets with provable proto-sentient or sentient species, but maybe that planet that just has cellular life, why are we protecting it anyway? That is his stance.
TL;DRSherrod, the current High Secretary, wants to halt Synthworld unless it shows a clear plan or progress, and prefers funding infrastructure in each system and rooting out corruption.
Yeah, basically she's the current High Secretary under Costigan. So she's hoping that she steps up into his role. But yes, her thing is, we need to hit the brakes on Synthworld. Unless they can prove definitively, hey, we've got a timeline for this or we're making legitimate progress, we're going to think about shuttering that program.
Yeah, she's also, as High Secretary for the past eight years, I believe, seen how much the infrastructure of the Empire could use an update. So one of her campaign promises was to fund an infrastructure project in each system in the Empire. And I really think she, in her heart, believes credits should go to improving infrastructure in these systems rather than Synthworld right now, or at least until, as Dave said, there is a clear plan for Synthworld. So she's got the economic state in her mind because she's been dealing with this for these past eight years, and she is prioritizing the infrastructure improvements over Synthworld at this moment.
Yeah, and she personally, in her career as High Secretary and before, makes it a priority to try to tighten loopholes and root out corruption where she sees it. So in my opinion, she sees Synthworld as something that has not had the oversight that it needs in order to justify the continual cost.
But technically, again, Costigan empowered her. She's his High Secretary, so I think her counterargument is, I was doing my job, because I was enacting the policies that Costigan wanted to do. So she's not throwing him under the bus, but just saying, she's a soldier, she's doing what she was told to do.
TL;DRThe current Imperator is not planning to endorse anyone, which Cherie Heiberg thinks is because two Universalist candidates, including his son, force a choice; multiple candidates per party is uncommon but allowed.
He is not. He is a member of the Universalist Party, and usually the Imperator who is in charge, who is a member of one of the political parties that has a candidate, will endorse the candidate of their political party. But in this case, there are two Universalist candidates, and one of them is his son. So, in my opinion, this is what he decided, because he has not outright said anything yet: that he had to make a choice between backing what his party wanted with Sherrod and backing what his son wanted. So he chose instead to do nothing.
Yeah. And I saw this question on the forums too, about multiple candidates from the same party. And it's totally allowed. And this happened in the past. It's become less in favor because the parties feel like it splits their vote and hurts their chances at taking the Imperator seat. So usually someone, when they make the primaries, will potentially drop out or back one of the other candidates. But this has happened in the past, where you have enough candidates who believe that they are the rightful heir to the throne, so to speak, which was maybe a poor choice of terms. But yeah, so it's uncommon but not unheard of in the Imperial election.
Yeah, and we like that bit of diversity within how the parties run themselves. The Universalists, it's like, best ideas come forward. The Transitionalists, Mira Noh's party, kind of coalesced around her because she is the most prominent figure in that party right now. And Paul LaSalle seemingly was running the Centralist party for years prior to the election as a way to freeze out potential other candidates, is what his opponents would say. So I just thought it was interesting how we could give the different parties a little bit of flavor by giving how they deal with their Imperial candidates a little difference.
TL;DRHaddock says they didn't think in left/right terms and just built a lineup around five topics, while Weissbaum adds that many traditionally left policies are already law in the UEE.
Weirdly enough, for me at least, when we were looking at these, I wasn't sort of thinking of doing one-to-one analogs of, oh, this person's right-wing or left-wing or central. I don't really care. Once we came up with the five topics of Synthworld, the Vanduul, the economy, xeno relations, stuff like that, it was just filling out a chart of who's going to be for what and who's against them, that kind of thing. So as a lineup it made sense, and then give them that sort of sprinkling... But that's just me.
I mean, there's also a lot of traditionally left, quote unquote, policies that are already law within the UEE: the idea of universal health care, universal education, universal housing. So the empire on a whole has these backbones, which maybe is why they didn't come up so much in this election, versus the people who are voicing objections to it because of the status quo. So it is one thing to consider, the current position of the UEE and how these candidates are reacting to it.
TL;DRThe speakers agree the setting was meant to be morally gray with no evil empire or perfect politicians, and more extreme candidates were kept limited to steer the game's direction while still hinting at storylines.
I mean, that was always one of the core tenets that Chris wanted when going in. It was like, we did not want the evil empire. We did not want everyone good. There was a lot of gray. You kind of liked people. You didn't like people. It was just tough... nuance to decision making.
Yeah, one of my favorite comments I like to see in any of the Imperial articles is when people start to debate policy positions, about how, oh, I really like this candidate because of this, but I really don't like that about that candidate. So I like that there are no straight white knights or straight terrible [candidates], there are shades of gray all around, because if there's a perfect politician out there, I've never met or I've never heard about him. So I wanted to make sure that we had a bit of that diversity of opinion, even within candidates, trickle on down through everyone.
And I mean, we had some of the more extremes in the earlier ones. There was, I can't remember his name, but there was the guy who was the real hardcore, I hate Tevarin, human first type dude.
But it became one of the things, again, going back to what we were saying earlier: yes, the community is picking, but we wanted to keep it a little hemmed in, just so it didn't take us in a direction where we're like, I'm not sure if the game would necessarily want to go that way. So that's why we kept them the way we did.
And if you go back and look at those primary candidates, those are touching on storylines that we want to have in the universe for you to come across, even though they're not the main political views. That human first initiative we want to have as a thread going on. I mean, he made it that far in the election process. So there's a lot of people who agree with that, even though it's a controversial stance. So we want that to come out when you're exploring the verse, running into people who feel this way.
That would be a lot of fun. For those that don't know, Kosi was the first Tevarin elected to the Senate. And that was in a senatorial election we did three, four years ago.
Right now, the voting is only on the website, just to clear it up. It's something we want to look at down the road. But for now, make your voice heard on the website. In the game, though, you can go check out some awesome election posters and election ads that are in 3.11.0, which just got released. So please, I think those are really cool. You should see them around stations and stuff.
Chaos. I don't know. I might go Mira Noh just to stir things up. I think I like her policies, but she's fun. She's got some interesting... It'd be that or Addison, because as much as AI unsettles me, it would be an interesting challenge to have to deal with creatively.
Yeah, I mean, I think Sherrod honestly does have good ideas and good policies. So if I were thinking about it from a long-term, even economical standpoint, I think she'd probably do the best job. But my heart is with Addison.
It's so tough, because I've had to get inside the head of all five of these candidates and try to understand their pitch, what they're for and what they're against. But my parents are both educators, and Addison kind of comes from that background. And I think I would probably vote for her just for fun. But I think Sherrod might be a better choice for the actual game world. So there's that divide between out-of-universe Adam versus in-universe Adam.
I mean, Lead Writer Will is excited about all these candidates, by the possibilities they're going to offer, and I hope to be surprised by them. I'm real excited. I've been seeing the debates, following along, and it's been absolutely fantastic. So thank you all for being so excited about participating in this conversation. It's meant a lot.